#ClassicFilmReading: Miss D & Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis by Kathryn Sermak

"I have no era. I was acting back then and I am still acting," she said. "My era will end the day they put me in my grave."

I'm obsessed with Kathryn Sermak's biography of Bette Davis, and her 10 years with the acting legend as her on-and-off personal assistant, Girl Friday, and ultimately, best friend (or step-daughter, as Bette referred to her). 

I remember when this came out in 2017 I rushed to get a copy because I was so intrigued by the premise: rather than a full-scale biography of the woman, the myth, the legend, Bette Davis, it was an intimate portrait of her later years. By the time all these stars enter their golden years, the biographies nearly always fizzle out. They stop acting with any consistency, so their last few films are glossed over. They all start winning lifetime achievement awards and they're listed out. Maybe you find out what their now-grown children and grandchildren are up to, but you don't get any engaging details.

Not with Miss D & Me. Kathryn's book is all about the last 10 years of Bette's life. She entered it as a temporary Girl Friday for a film shoot in 1979 but ended up staying with the star until her dying day. 

With Miss D & Me, Kathryn shows a tender side of an aging titan. She's still acting, off and on, and still as in command as she ever was. But she's getting older and weaker, and in the book, she deals with breast cancer and a stroke and all the side effects, but you never feel that she's truly pitiful. She's pure Bette Davis until the final pages, when a final, swift illness results in her death in a hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

There's also the familial side of Bette on full display. Her tense and fraught relationship with her daughter B.D. and son-in-law Jeremy, neither of whom come off well in the book, is laid bare. We see a Fourth of July family reunion go awry; we learn all about how B.D. and her family become born again; and the fallout from B.D.'s hit-job of a memoir, My Mother's Keeper, takes up ample space. The revelation that Kathryn and Bette's lawyer have to keep it from Bette because she's so poorly the stress and shock could kill her if she knows before it's published is absolutely devastating. What a terrible position to have been put in, but I can't imagine I'd have done it any differently. Of Michael, Bette's son, there's less, but he did maintain a positive relationship with his mother and with Kathryn, and he's thanked several times over in the acknowledgements, so it's nice that Bette had some loyalty.

What I admire and appreciate about Bette Davis is that she was confident and firmly herself. I feel like the stories I heard about her growing up had less to do with her talent and skills—she'd re-write portions of her scripts, block her own scenes, discuss the lighting, and fight for the films she wanted, and didn't want, to make—and more with surface level gloss. The terrifying make-up of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? or the quips from All About Eve, and of course, the song 'Bette Davis Eyes.' It feels like for the greater public, as the decades went on, she became less of a legend and more of a pop culture myth reduced to soundbites and a catchy-as-hell song. 

If you want a portrait of Bette Davis, singularly herself despite all the health setbacks, in her final years, you can't go wrong with Kathryn's tender ode to the legend. I definitely recommend this book!

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And you all know how much I love making notes of tidbits, tea and other gossip from the Old Hollywood books I'm reading, so here are some of my favourite bits from Miss D & Me:

• Bette's hotel room was to be decorated with gardenias, or, if not available, daisies, along with a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse chilling in an ice bucket with a bottle of club soda. 
• Bette didn't really fight the paparazzi, though she did go out of her way to try and stop them from getting pictures. At one point, they get shots of her on her way to set and Kathryn wants to call up the Disney press department to get them to handle it but Bette tells her no. "Those men have a job to do...They have families to feed. No need to make a fuss. Remember that it is always the best food that the birds pick at."
• They have dinner with Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl, and Patricia, living in the aftermath of a stroke, brings up how she met the love of her life at the age of 23 (the age Kathryn was at the time). Kathryn thinks she's talking about Roald Dahl, but Bette informs her later that she actually means Gary Cooper, with whom she'd had a rocky affair. 
• Bette's favourite dessert was blueberries covered in cold heavy cream. Sounds delightful!
• Bette quit Aaron Spelling's television series Hotel because she didn't like the tawdriness and the writing quality. But before she quit, she called him after receiving a script and told him "I suggest the next time you take that money you spent on five dozen roses and a limousine and hire better writers." 
• Obsessed with the fact that Elizabeth Taylor was at her birthday party in 1987 but we don't learn more about it!
• During a road trip through France, Bette stops for lunch and sits under umbrellas emblazoned with the Coca Cola logo on them. She tells Kathryn to take a picture: "If Joan could only see me now. No, Joan, no Pepsi for me." 
• Bette had a standing appointment Friday afternoons to touch up her roots. 
• She also owned a 1980 Ford Mustang they called Black Beauty. 
• When she learns that B.D., Jeremy and the kids are born-again Christians, she quips, "That is quite a transformation from the way the two of you were when you met." B.D. was 16 at the time they met, and Jeremy was twice her age. 🤐
• She and Helen Hayes made a TV movie together, Murder with Mirrors, but they did not become friends. Bette did lend out Kathryn's services to Helen, though, when they realized she didn't have an assistant.
• Bette tells Kathryn that one of the girls who replaced Kathryn (temporarily) had a story about Joan Crawford: she went to a movie theatre with the hopes of being spotted, though she claimed she was trying to sneak in unnoticed. Bette says: "I can tell you that Joan never wanted to sneak into anything in her life! ... Joan came to the movie theatre all made up and wearing fur and diamonds, the very opposite of incognito. Caroline said she can't even remember the film they watched. That had to be Joan's intent." 
• Near the end, the two talk about funeral arrangements. Bette says she wants a full face of make-up and an early morning service at 4 am so as to avoid the paparazzi from getting any shots of her. Kathryn doesn't say if that happened in the end.
• Bette really wanted to receive the Kennedy Center Honours and when she got a ballot from the nominating committee in 1987, she wrote in her own name. She was convinced that she'd been skipped for all those years because of her Democratic politics (if only she could see the sh*tshow going on today!), but in the end it didn't matter, because President Reagan was the one to confer the honour on her. 
• In San Sebastian she sees a billboard for the Michael Keaton Batman movie and quips that she knows her era is over and she's ready to pass the torch. 
• Bette died at 11:45 pm on October 6, 1989. Before she passed she promised to give Kathryn a sign that she was with her. When Kathryn returns to her California house, she swears she can hear Bette in her head telling her to go check the clock. It stopped at the time Bette died.